Bone Machine (35 page)

Jamal was crying like he had never cried before.

‘Hold on, man, just hold on …’

He held Amar’s body, pressing his jacket against the bullet wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Amar’s face was twisted
in pain, his eyes rolling back in his head. He was shivering from more than just the cold. Shock was setting in.

‘Come on, man, it’s me. It’s Jamal. You can’t die, man, you can’t die …’

Jamal had watched Amar get shot from the other side of the road, powerless to do anything about it. As soon as he saw what
had happened, he had jumped behind the steering wheel of the Volvo, revved it up, hit the headlights and, in his best
Grand Theft Auto
style, moved it forward. Tokic had been poised to fire again but had run back to his car on hearing the noise. Leaving Jamal
cradling Amar.

‘Jamal …’ Amar tried to grip Jamal’s arm. Jamal took his fingers, held them tight.

‘I’m here, man, I’m here. I’m not goin’ nowhere.’

Amar’s breathing became heavier. Jamal held him harder.

‘Don’t go, man, don’t go. Stay. Stay with me.’ He clung on to him, tried to find the right words. Words that would comfort,
soothe. Heal. Save his life. ‘Who’m I gonna play
Grand Theft Auto
with, eh? Who?’

Amar gave a weak smile.

‘That’s it, man, hold on. Hold on.’ Impotent emotion welled inside him. He looked at his friend lying there, helpless. Willed
him to get up. ‘Come on, Amar. You can do it,
man. I made a promise, didn’t I? A promise to Joe. That I would look after you. Let no harm come to you. I made a promise
…’

He heard sirens: distant, getting quickly nearer.

‘Just hold on, man, hold on. They’re coming …’

Donovan sat in the Mondeo, stared at the road in front of him. The rain rendered the windscreen liquid, making what few cars
went past little blurs of wet, rushing sparkle against the night.

Tyne Dock. The Port of Tyne Authority car park. This far, for Donovan, and no further. Low-level, red-brick administration
offices behind him, interior lights sparse. The dock itself a huge, sprawling complex with areas for containers, rail, an
enormous amount of warehouse space and a sea service that covered, among other places, Scandinavia and the Baltic. And all
the action, Donovan thought, was happening on the dock front itself. It felt like it was miles away. It could have been miles
away.

He sighed. Played Turnbull’s last conversation again in his head.

‘Fuck off.’ Donovan was getting out of the car.

‘I said you’re staying here. Last thing we need is a fuckin’ civilian messin’ everythin’ up.’

‘Oh, so I’m a civilian now, am I, is that it? You were keen enough for my help earlier. When no one else wanted to know you.’

Turnbull reddened slightly. ‘Sorry. But that’s the way it is. You have to wait here.’

‘OK,’ said Donovan. ‘Makes sense. After all, you’re in enough trouble already without me turning up. Might say something embarrassing.
Don’t want that, do you?’

Turnbull got hurriedly out of the car, actually growling. Donovan couldn’t let that one slip past.

‘Were you growling? Actually making bear noises?’

He received a mumbled ‘fuck off, wait there’ as his reply, and Turnbull walked off.

So Donovan had waited. And he wasn’t happy.

He looked around, saw nothing, heard nothing. The adrenalin rush was still there, running around his system, waiting to be
utilized. He had to do something. He hadn’t come all this way to sit in a car park.

The security guard in the gatehouse looked as bored as Donovan felt. He had seen Turnbull talking to him, assumed he was issuing
him with instructions not to let Donovan into the main area.

Well, fuck that.

He pulled his old mobile out of his pocket, put it to his ear. Started the car at the same time, swung it towards the barrier.
The guard was a round, grey-haired cheerful man smelling of mints, on the wrong side of middle age and with a strawberry nose
to match. He got up from his portable TV, crossed to the window. Donovan stopped, held up the mobile.

‘Detective Sergeant Turnbull,’ he said. ‘Just got a call from him. Got to go through. Now.’ He revved the car up.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the guard began. ‘I’ve got orders …’

Donovan extended his arm, waved the phone out of the window, pumped up the urgency in his voice. ‘Do you want to tell him?
He said now.’

The guard, obviously not one for confrontation, opened the barrier. Donovan waved the kind of thank you a man would if he
was in a hurry and went through.

Once inside, he realized he had no idea where he was going. It was massive, much bigger than he had imagined, with long sheds
down one side of the road, great piles of scrap metal on another. Tractors and JCBs parked further along, what looked like
metal feed silos behind them. He tried to think rationally: where would Turnbull be?

Containers. That would be how they were getting the girls in. Import–export, wasn’t that Kovacs’ official job title? Containers.
And cranes to get them off and on the ships. That’s what he would look for.

He would drive around until he found them, decide what to do next when he was there.

Turnbull sat in the observation room at the Port of Tyne Authority. In front of him was a bank of screens relaying, at regular
intervals, CCTV pictures from around the dock. He had particularly asked for attention to be focused on the container areas.

Beside him sat Bob Grant, a sandy-haired, fit-looking DI in his mid-thirties. Dressed in combats and an army parka, he was
off duty but on point. Turnbull had been put through to him with his information. Turnbull was impressed: Grant had been off
duty, but in the time it took Turnbull to drive from Bensham to Tyne Dock he had managed to get permission for and assemble
an armed rapid-response unit and position them at strategic places, with the help of several Port of Tyne staff, around the
docks on standby.

The security manager had gone to great lengths to describe how it was impossible for smuggling to take place on a modern dock
such as this one. Anxious to be believed, he had repeated the information over and over until Turnbull had asked him, politely
but firmly, to shut up. He had done. The two policemen then concentrated only on the screens.

‘You sure this tip-off is genuine?’ asked Bob Grant, not for the first time.

‘Absolutely,’ replied Turnbull. ‘No doubt about the source.’

Grant had already asked how it could be coming in at this
time. There was no workforce, no one to unload. No ship down to be unloaded.

‘Maybe they’re bringing their own help,’ he had said, becoming irritated. ‘Look, you believe it or you wouldn’t be here.’

Grant, having no reply, had fallen silent.

Turnbull’s call to Nattrass had gone surprisingly well, he thought. Donovan, he grudgingly admitted, had been right. He was
glad he had done it. There was still some way to go, some serious bridge building to be done, and she hadn’t for one minute
believed him when he had said he had gone undercover and been working on his own initiative. He hadn’t believed that himself.
But it was something to be worked out later. Right now, he had a job to do.

He and Grant kept concentrating on the screens.

In the surrounding darkness, the containers, stacked neatly on top of one another, colour and size coded, and with road-width
alleyways in between, looked like a city in miniature. Both simultaneously permanent and temporary. Half brutally futurist,
half shantytown. The rain, the overhead lighting, the screen relay, increased the feeling of grimness and foreboding. Looking
from screen to screen, the containers were stacked for what seemed like miles, the driveways and alleyways offering a variety
of shadowed concealment.

Turnbull wondered how long some of those containers had been there. Wondered just what might have been left inside. Secrets
lost or buried.

They kept looking, eyes flickering from one screen to another.

Grant sighed, rubbed his eyes. Getting ready to speak again.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Are you sure …?’

Here we go, thought Turnbull.

*

Decca was finally on the right road.

It had taken some time, unfamiliar as he was with being south of the river, but more by luck than judgement he had seen a
sign pointing to Tyne Dock and followed it, like a drowning diver clinging to his final air line.

He had driven up to the gates, aware all the time of Tokic’s gun sticking in his back. BMWs were good, he thought, but he
doubted that their upholstery would stop a bullet. He stopped, leaned across to the glove compartment, opened it. Felt cold
metal on the back of his neck.

‘What are you doing?’ Tokic’s voice.

‘Getting my security pass,’ Decca said in a voice that he didn’t recognize as his own. ‘Won’t let me in without it.’

‘No tricks.’

No tricks, thought Decca. Did people really say that?

He got his pass out, let the window slide down. Ignored the rain being blown on to his face. He showed the pass to the elderly
guard, smiled.

The guard nodded, then leaned closer and said, ‘Who’ve you got with you?’

Decca blinked at the fumes. Whatever the guard was drinking it clearly had clinical applications. ‘They’re with me,’ he tried
to say in as breezy a manner as possible. ‘No problems.’

‘They need passes too,’ said the guard.

Decca felt the gun being moved away from his back, heard a click. Knew it was pointing at the guard in his box.

‘OK,’ said Decca, trying to quell the panic in his voice. ‘Have you got some I could use?’

The guard smiled. ‘You gotta check with the office for them. An’ they’re closed.’

Decca felt the gun being moved, the target being focused in the sights.

Decca reached into his pocket, brought out a crumpled twenty, handed it over. ‘What about that? That OK?’

The guard laughed. ‘That’ll do nicely, sir.’

The barrier was raised. Decca put the car into gear, drove through.

Felt the gun being repositioned against his back.

Thought seriously about seeking another career.

‘So what d’you think?’

Peta looked between the two detectives, waiting for an answer.

She sat next to the Prof in DCI Fenton’s office, papers, books and files spread out before them. The Prof had just finished
explaining his theory to both Fenton and Nattrass. The two glanced at each other, faces impassive.

‘You say,’ began Nattrass, not proceeding before receiving a nod from Fenton, ‘that there should be some kind of ritualistic
aspect to the way the bodies were left?’

The Prof nodded. ‘If my hypothesis is correct, it would make logical sense.’

‘And what do you think that would be?’

The Prof shrugged, looked uneasy. He had talked with Peta on the way there. Reluctant to divulge his source to Fenton and
Nattrass, he had decided to claim that the whole thing was his idea. ‘I can only speculate,’ he said. ‘As I said, pennies
over the eyes, mouth sewn shut. Some kind of embalming, mummification, I don’t know.’

Another glance between Fenton and Nattrass.

‘Just out of curiosity,’ said Fenton, ‘do you have a contact on this investigation?’

The Prof looked down, shook his head. ‘No.’

Peta was beginning to share the Prof’s uneasiness; they exchanged glances of their own. Peta had called Nattrass, asked her
over to the university. Nattrass had insisted they meet at Market Street police station as she couldn’t leave her
desk at present. Peta had put that to the Prof. Reluctantly, and after much persuasion, he had agreed to come to the station.
But she knew he was unhappy about it. More than unhappy.

‘You know how some people have a fear of hospitals?’ he had said to Peta in his office before leaving. ‘How they think once
they go into hospital they’ll never come out again?’

She had nodded.

‘I feel the same about police stations.’

Peta had thought that was just an old stoner’s paranoia, but listening to the way the questions seemed to be going, she wasn’t
so sure.

Fenton sat behind his desk, hoping, it seemed to Peta, that it would give him a natural air of authority. ‘And the night of
Jill Tennant’s disappearance,’ he said, ‘you were … where, exactly?’

The Prof cleared his throat. ‘At a Wilco concert. Waiting for Jill. As you know. As I’ve been cleared for.’

Another look between Nattrass and Fenton.

‘There’s quite a file on you here, Mr McAllister,’ said Fenton, his gaze steely and even. ‘From way back.’

‘Look, are we suspects here?’ asked Peta angrily.

‘Suspects?’ said Fenton. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘You just seem to be ignoring what we’ve actually brought you. And wasting our time with pointless questions.’

‘Those questions aren’t pointless,’ said Fenton. He seemed to regret the words as soon as they escaped his lips.

‘Yes they bloody are,’ said Peta, jumping on them. She stood up. ‘There’s a killer out on the streets. We’ve brought you something
that could be a big help in catching him. And all you can do is sit there behind your desk and play “My Cock’s Bigger than
Yours”. Well, fuck you. We’ll go.’ She began gathering the papers on the desk together. ‘Take our theory somewhere else if
you’re not interested. The papers, perhaps.’

Another glance between the two police. A more worried one this time. Nattrass came forward.

‘Don’t do that, Peta. Please.’

Peta stopped, looked at her.

‘Yes, we are interested.’

‘And?’

Nattrass turned to Fenton, who gave a sigh, an irritable nod.

‘You’re not suspects.’

Without looking, she knew the Prof was breathing a huge sigh of relief. ‘Thank you. Apologies all round, I think,’ she said.
She looked at Fenton. He couldn’t hold her eyes.

‘That was unprofessional of me under the circumstances,’ he said to the desk. ‘And I apologize unreservedly.’

Peta gave a brittle smile. ‘So now we’re communicating. What next?’

Fenton looked at the two of them, clearly unhappy at having his authority attacked in his own office, but not risking upsetting
them any further. ‘It’s a good theory,’ he said. ‘I like it. Think it has weight. Leave it with us. We’ll follow it up.’

‘That’s it?’ said Peta.

Fenton looked genuinely puzzled. ‘What were you expecting?’

Peta let it go, said nothing.

Fenton pointed to the papers on the desk. ‘May I?’

‘They’re to be returned to me afterwards,’ said the Prof, his voice slightly uncertain.

Fenton nodded.

‘I’ll see you out,’ said Nattrass.

She saw them to the main door. Outside, the rain was getting into its stride. Nattrass stopped and turned, offered her hand.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said, her tone conciliatory. ‘To
both of you. But especially you, Mr McAllister. And for what I said the other day. It was uncalled for. I’m sure what you
brought us will be a big help.’

The Prof shook hands without looking at her. Said nothing. Peta made goodbyes on his behalf. Nattrass turned and walked away.

‘Hate police stations,’ he said, once she was out of earshot.

‘I can see why.’

‘But thank you.’

‘No problem.’ Peta allowed herself a small sigh.

Joe Donovan would have been proud of me, she thought.

Nattrass made it back to the office as fast as she could. Fenton was waiting for her, poring over the Prof’s notes.

‘What do you think?’ she asked.

‘Fucking dynamite,’ he said, more animated than he had been in front of the two members of the public. ‘That’s what I think.
Worth having to kowtow to that old hippie to get this. Di, get a team in and on to this straight away. Don’t worry about overtime.
Our academic friend has saved us the expense of calling in a profiler, so we can afford to be a bit more generous. As long
as it gets results.’ He looked at the file, sifted through the sheets. ‘And I’m sure it will,’ he said, ‘I’m sure it will.
Parameters, he said. The right parameters. Well, we’ve got them now. I feel sure of it. It’s only a matter of time, Di. Only
a matter of time.’

Nattrass turned, left the office. Buzzing once again.

She could feel it too.

The Historian was hunting.

Down on the quayside, making one last desperate trawl. They were on to him, he could feel it. The net was closing in. He had
always thought that phrase was just so much
tabloid cliché. But that was exactly how he felt. Like an invisible net was encircling him, his would-be captors just waiting
for him to step out of line, press the hidden switch that would activate the trap.

When he realized that was what was happening, his first reaction was to do nothing. Stand immobile like a statue, play dead.
Bury his head in the sand. Whatever, just wait for them to go away. But that was just as bad as doing something. That would
be like waiting for them, welcoming them with a cup of tea, almost. Anything, looked at it that way, would be the wrong thing
to do.

And there was his work. His research. He had to finish it, had to find definitive answers. Yes or no. Yes or no. Had to. So
the decision almost made itself. He prioritized. The work was the most important thing. It was what he had to do. It was what
the spirits were telling him to do. Urging him on. He had to honour them. He had to keep going.

So there he was, walking slowly along the quayside, pushing his wheelchair. People all around him, bar hopping, going to and
from restaurants, Baltic and the Sage music centre. Relaxed, looking for pleasure, entertainment. And him standing out. The
only one of them with a purpose, an agenda.

He pushed his way through them, not caring that they could see there was no one in the wheelchair, nothing but a bundle of
old clothes wrapped around a dummy. Hurrying as he went, knocking the strollers left and right.

He didn’t care. Let them see him, let them gawp. He didn’t care.

He had the angry hiss of the spirits in his ears. Cajoling, shouting even. He had the weight of history bearing down on him.

He had work to do.

He moved past the end of Dean Street, past the old
Guildhall, down under the High Level Bridge. The lights became more sporadic at this point, the crowd thinner. It would be
easier to pick off the stragglers, the ones who might not be so easily missed.

The bars and clubs petered out. Only one bar left and a hotel. A businessman’s hotel.

He knew what kind of women hung around those places. He smiled to himself. Almost like old times.

He stopped on a corner, the entrance to Long Stairs behind him. The winding, badly lit old stone steps that led from the quayside
to the old Keep. He pulled the chair in and waited.

But not for long. A girl came out of the hotel, made her way across the road. She seemed to be headed for the bar but stopped,
looked around. As if she was waiting for someone.

The Historian took her in. Blonde, slim, young. Whorishly dressed.

She would do.

He made up his mind, crossed to her. Satisfied there was no one else about. He would have seen them while he was waiting.
He had to catch her while she was still undecided about what to do next.

‘Excuse me,’ he said in his mildest, most inoffensive voice, making a big production out of pushing the chair up and over
the pavement, hand already tightening on his hidden stun gun. ‘Could you help me, please?’

The girl gave one last look around, shook her head, crossed to him.

‘Yes?’ she said, her accent Eastern European.

He smiled, readied the gun.

He had her.

Peta stood on the steps of Market Street police station, looked at the rain, putting off moving out into it. She pulled her
coat around her. The Prof stood next to her, unmoving.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I feel I should apologize. For breaking into your office. And suspecting you of being a murderer.’

The Prof laughed. ‘Forgiven.’

She nodded. ‘Thank you.’

He nodded in return.

‘Your mate’s going to be pissed off,’ she said. ‘Missing out on handing his theory over.’

‘I’m sure he’ll get over it.’

They both looked at the rain.

‘Listen,’ the Prof said. ‘Would you care to get something to eat? Or a drink, perhaps?’

It was Peta’s turn to smile. ‘I would love to. But,’ she said quickly, before he got his hopes up, ‘I’m still working. I’ve
still got a job to do tonight.’

The Prof nodded. ‘How many knock-backs can one man take?’

‘It’s not that. I do have to work. Honestly.’

‘So,’ said the Prof to hide his obvious embarrassment, ‘what is it you do, exactly? As well as being a student, of course.’

Peta smiled again, looked him in the eyes. ‘I’ll tell you sometime. Maybe when we go for that drink.’

‘Right.’ The Prof laughed, understanding her words. ‘Right.’

‘But I really have to go.’ She extended her hand. ‘See you tomorrow.’

He shook it. ‘Tomorrow.’

She turned, walked off into the rain, pulling the paper out of her pocket which had the address Donovan had given her.

Probably be no one there, she thought, not at this time. But still, worth a try.

Just one last thing for the night.

And then home.